


would it be a sin (if i can't help falling in love with you)

by injeong



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, If you read the epilogue, KagaKuro - Freeform, KiKasa - Freeform, Love Triangles, M/M, Pining, Sort Of, kasakise - Freeform, there's a lot of pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-15 01:11:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21245060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/injeong/pseuds/injeong
Summary: Kasamatsu loves Kise. (He is the sun, the moon, the stars, the gentle breeze and radiant laughter that lighten the world up wherever he goes. To Kasamatsu, he is everything.)Kise loves Kuroko. (Something more, something more; always just a little different than with everyone else, softer, gentler, smiles wider, adoring in a way he never adored anything or anyone else.)There had been no hope for him since the beginning.(Incomplete love triangle (square??) = Kasamatsu -> Kise -> Kuroko <-> Kagami





	1. Chapter 1

  
Kasamatsu Yukio loves Kise Ryouta.

There was no sudden moment of revelation, no emotional confessions or late nights spent wondering. He loves him. It's a fact more certain than the sky is high and the sea is wide. He can't remember a certain moment, a one turning point in his life where he realizes, _I'm in love_. There was never a one moment. There was just Kise.

Maybe he's always loved him. From the first glance, eyes meeting across the room for a split second before being drawn away - but there was a spark, Kasamatsu had been sure, a spark between them that lingered and burned even after they both looked away.

Now, looking back, he knows that only he felt it.

_It's a shame_, he thinks, all the time. He's sure that he's not imagining how well they fit together - despite the yelling and the occasional kick on his side and the playfully dramatic reactions on Kise's side, he knows that underneath lies a mutual understanding quite unlike anything he's ever had before, a kind of understanding that stemmed not only from being teammates, but being made of the same material, knowing the same things and thinking the same things. A kind of understanding where he doesn't need words to decipher the glances and stares that Kise sends his way, a kind of understanding where Kise doesn't wait for a verbal invitation before launching another conversation about precisely the topic Kasamatsu had been about to bring up.

He knows he's not the only one who feels it, he _knows_ he doesn't imagine the radiance of Kise's smile when he looks towards him, he doesn't imagine the words shared between them that they don't share to anyone else, he doesn't imagine the unsaid desperation that bleeds through to him when he's supporting Kise after their final match, the way Kise clutches at his arms and doesn't let go until much, much later.

But he knows, now, that it didn't mean the same thing to Kise as it meant to him.

Because although Kasamatsu is undoubtedly, irrevocably in love with Kise, Kise is not in love with him.

He loves someone else.

Kise never talks about it to him - he's almost certain that Kise doesn't think he even _knows_. But he does. He's watched him for a year, _loved_ him for a year, and he can tell, he can hear the unspoken words as clearly as he can hear the spoken ones.

Kise loves Kuroko.

Kasamatsu hasn't spent a lot of time around those from Seirin, but he knows. Sometimes he thinks it's the way Kise's eyes immediately flick to the short, blue-haired boy before anyone else even realizes he's there, or how they linger for just a few moments too long when they leave. Sometimes he thinks it's the way Kise talks to him, the affection that bleeds into his voice that he's never heard used for anyone else, how easily the words seem to flow out, like he has nothing left he wants to hide from him. Other times it's the touches, fleeting but feather-soft and painfully gentle, or his smiles and laughter when they talk and play, or so many other things that Kasamatsu can only watch from a distance.

He pretends not to see those fleeting but adoring glances, pretends not to notice how Kise's smile is a little brighter and lasts a little longer when calling or texting Kuroko, pretends that he doesn't know exactly who Kise is talking about when the younger boy comes up to him one day, ears red and stammering, asking him how to deal with a crush that won't be reciprocated.

He knows they have a history. All of the Generation of Miracles, to be honest, act in this certain way around each other, a clearly present but unspoken history that ties them all together, heavy and liberating at the same time. But Kise's ties with Kuroko seem ... different, somehow. He doesn't know what's happened between them in the past, and he probably won't ever know. He won't ask. But he knows, for them, it's important.

And yet, Kasamatsu isn't jealous. At least, he doesn't think he is. He yearns for Kise, yes; he wants to be the one whom Kise looks at with such subtle adoration and affection, he wants to be the one who receives those gentle touches and specially bright smiles.

But then they wouldn't be _them_. He doesn't want to be Kuroko to Kise, he wants to be Kasamatsu to Kise. If he took Kuroko's place, it wouldn't be the same. And Kasamatsu would rather have this, the ever-present ache of an empty gap where it could be _more_ but at least what he has right now with Kise is _real_, than something that wasn't _them_.

  
Perhaps, if Kuroko had returned Kise's feelings, Kasamatsu would have been able to let himself be content.

Sometimes, Kasamatsu thinks this is a hundred times worse. Knowing that if things were _just_ a little bit different, he and Kise would have each other and everything would still go on, unaffected, and he wouldn't have to spend every day pretending that he didn't _know_ exactly how the pitiful longing on Kise's face feels like, pretending that they weren't in the exact same position of yearning for something just out of reach, someone they love who would love them back.

Because despite everything, Kuroko does not love Kise.

It's obvious to him and everyone around him who Kuroko really, truly loves. It's always been something _there_, something so subtle and yet so large. Kagami Taiga and Kuroko Tetsuya, Kuroko Tetsuya and Kagami Taiga. There was only them, no space for anyone else. Kise _knows_ that, Kasamatsu knows that he knows, and yet, just like Kasamatsu, Kise looks on with the same hopelessness, unable to retract the feelings inside him that he knows will never be returned, _cannot_ be returned.

There's always just enough, though, enough to fan the dying flame amidst the cold winds - a smile reserved only for the closest friends, moments on the basketball court where the familiarity of passes and shots honed over years together is heavy in the air, a lone voice shouting from high up in the stands (that was the first time Kasamatsu ever heard Kuroko raise his voice) that only had to say a few words for the light in Kise's eyes to return and energize him for the match against Haizaki faster than any of Kasamatsu's words ever could.

But never enough to give him any real hope. Because both Kise and Kasamatsu, and the entire world, knows that Kagami returns everything that Kuroko feels towards him. The gentle, shiningly clear love between them is beautiful <strike>and awful</strike> and a part of Kasamatsu hates it.

It's a constant, bitter reminder, the incompleteness of Kasamatsu's own heart, the unfairness of it all.

He tries to be happy for them (it's so rare to find a soulmate, a partner in everything like that) and mostly, he is, but the rest of him is constantly thinking about how _it could have been like this for him and Kise_, it still could; but it's not, because Kise is chasing Kuroko, the one he wants and yet the one person he cannot have, on a hopelessly endless road and he's left Kasamatsu far behind a long time ago. Kise's painful and unreturned love for Kuroko reflects Kasamatsu's painful and unreturned love for Kise, a mirror directly in front of him and he can only touch and never go through.

It could have been perfect.

And sometimes, to make it all worse, sometimes during practice Kise will pull off a move that makes the rest of the team cheer and he'll look towards Kasamatsu with his eyes shining, or they'll be sitting on the school roof together, eating lunch with each other, and Kasamatsu will say something that makes Kise laugh, and he'll think, _maybe it can still work_. Maybe Kise will be able to release himself from the empty cycle of loving someone he cannot have, and instead love him back, and Kasamatsu would be able to give him all the love that he deserves but couldn't get from Kuroko or anyone else, and they could both be happy -

\- but then Kasamatsu remembers, remembers the _everything_ that Kise holds in his eyes when he looks towards Kuroko, remembers the last, unbreakable wall between him and Kise, thin and transparent and barely there, invisible enough for him to sometimes forget for a few, tantalizing moments and believe that there's a hope, a spark, but thick and impenetrable enough for him to know with crushing certainty that with things the way they are, Kise will never be his and it has always been that way, will always be that way.


	2. take my hand (take my whole life too)

It's a decision made only minutes before he carries it out, hesitating in front of the lockers that he won't see again once he steps out of the school gates after his graduation for the final time. Kasamatsu knows that there's no chance, almost no chance at all, that things will ever change to be the way he wants them - Kise is still young, a full high school career ahead of him with new people and lovers to meet and know, and Kasamatsu is (though he tries his best to displace the thought from his mind) essentially an adult, enrolling into a university in which he will stay for a few years before moving out into the wider world. There's no guarantee that Kise will even remember him in a few years.

But Kasamatsu also knows that _this_, what he feels and what he _has_, he won't find anywhere else, ever.

  
So he lets Kise walk with him out towards the school gates for the last time, listening to the chatter that he's become to accustomed to so quickly over the period of just a year, all the while steeling himself for the one thing he never thought he'd be able to bring himself to do.

"- and Kuroko-cchi is already bragging about how much their first years have improved but honestly I'm sure that our team will be /much/ cooler and better than them once the spring tournament rolls around next year -"

He stops, pausing once more. "Kise?"

The blond stops halfway through his sentence and blinks up at him. "Senpai?"

"Hold out your hand."

"Uh - okay ... like this?" The small object in his hand seems to burn against his skin.

Before he can change his mind, Kasamatsu drops the button into the open palm in front of him. Kise stares at it blankly for a few moments, before his eyes flick up towards Kasamatsu's blazer, where the second button is missing, and his mouth parts slightly in dawning realization and surprise.

"Senpai -" Kise is flustered, he can tell (how he didn't realize after a year of Kasamatsu's practically obvious pining, he has no idea). "Senpai, this is - I - what is this?"

And for that, Kasamatsu doesn't really have a proper answer. A confession? A promise? But it wasn't, not really. He's not promising anything, he doesn't _want_ to promise Kise anything, he doesn't want to force anything that would dampen the bond he knows they share. He hesitates for few, long, seconds, gazing into the honey-brown of Kise's eyes as if he could find an answer to everything in them. (He's sure he could, if he looked long enough, hard enough.)

"A raincheck," he says finally. He tastes the words on his lips, and they sound ... good. Hopeful.

Kise is still staring at him in a mix of wonder and surprise and a hundred other things Kasamatsu couldn't hope to know. "Senpai," he says again, almost helplessly. "I - I can't - I don't think I can - "

Kasamatsu cuts him off quickly. "I know," he says, and reaches out, closing Kise's fingers over the button. "I know," he says again. _I've seen the way you look at him, the way you never looked at me_. "Believe me, I do. But - I can't just -" he shakes his head, a million words running through his head, and tightens his grip slightly, feeling the warmth of Kise's fingers under his own. "I can't just let go. So - just in case, if things ... change, if you decide - that maybe -"

"Just in case," Kise repeats, and then he's smiling again - it's not his usual, wide, bright grin. It's a small, tentative smile, almost shy, and somehow Kasamatsu thinks that it shines brighter than the sun.

"Just in case," he agrees.

**Author's Note:**

> I originally had Aomine in the mix as well but I figured a love pentagon would be going a little too overboard XD  
(I came up with this idea in the shower and the angst was too much so I wrote an epilogue! Proceed to read it if you want a (happy??) more hopeful ending ^^)


End file.
